


give me some time, I'm living in twilight

by oh_simone



Series: magic get-along telephones [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Parallel Universes, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-01
Updated: 2018-06-01
Packaged: 2019-05-16 18:43:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14816807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oh_simone/pseuds/oh_simone
Summary: A spaceship carrying the survivors from Titan lands in Wakanda, and Tony Stark is not on it.





	give me some time, I'm living in twilight

**Author's Note:**

> Guys I went through many questionable songs to pull a title for this one. It's from Electric Light Orchestra's 'Telephone Line' btw, because I'm obvious like that.

When the alien spacecraft touches down just outside the Wakandan barrier, they drag themselves upright and raise their weapons and wait for the other shoe to drop.

Steve is—Steve is numb. It’s been almost 24 hours—a full day since Thanos had snapped his fingers and murdered half of the universe. But time hasn’t registered with Steve. He feels nothing. He’s tired, and his ribs are too broken to have fully healed yet so each breath is the approximate sensation of sharp burning shards, but his head is blessedly empty, his heart beats slow and steady. He clings to the numbness, tries not to discover whether the thick silence around him is because of his own stifled senses or the hollow emptiness of the dead. When Bucky’s uncertain frown flashes across his mind, when he thinks he hears the echo of Sam’s voice, he strangles the stark, agonizing clarity that forces up his throat and shoves it away so that the sweet nothingness can take hold again. He dreads the moment when that won’t be enough.

Now, there is something else to take care of though, a possible hostile spacecraft to snag their attention, so that Steve can not remember the soft, uneasy way Bucky’d called his name, the way it had seemed, just for a moment, that the dust was only flaking mud, dried and powdery in a brisk wind.

Besides him, Thor’s axe is poised and Natasha levels her handgun, even though the Wakandans had equipped her with far superior weapons; she’s spent the last evening methodically fieldstripping and reassembling her arsenal, lips bloodless and hands brutally efficient. The Wakandans are spaced out alongside them; steely eyed Okoye looks ready to set the whole ship afire, friend or foe. Her new charge, Shuri, has both fists up and leveled at the ship. Her eyes are red and swollen, but clear.

“That’s my ship,” Rocket says, but stays where he’s crouched next to Thor.

“Steady, Rabbit, we do not know who is inside yet,” Thor murmurs.

A pneumatic hiss breaks the silence; the dented door sticks and the gears make horrible grinding sounds until someone kicks it from inside and then it slams open way too fast. Down the gangplank a ragged crew staggers. Rocket gives a cry of relief and rushes forward.

“Where the fuck have you guys been?” he shouts, skidding to a stop just before them, his voice breaking. “You missed the fighting!”

“It is you who missed the fight with Thanos,” replies a massive, bald man with intricate scoring across his bare skin. There’s no heat to his words however, and he drops a hand over Rocket’s head in bare relief.

“He came here too, assholes,” Rocket says, and the big man’s shoulders sag.

A blond man with his arm supporting a young woman with unsettling large eyes and two stalks on her head stumbles down besides them.

“Groot?” the newcomer asks, curt, and when Rocket’s head dips and shakes, the woman wails softly. The four of them collapse towards each other, heads bowed.

But there are more people coming down the ramp now—from behind, Bruce gives a strangled shout and shoves ahead, breaking past the Wakandans, Colonel Rhodes close behind. A tall bearded man in a cloak is being helped down by a young, gangly teenager, both of them looking worse for the wear; Steve recognizes the spider insignia on the boy's costume, but his drawn, exhausted face is new.

“Strange! Oh my god, you're alive,” Bruce says, taking his other side.

“Not for long without medical intervention,” the man—Strange wheezes, voice tight with pain. Shuri makes a sharp gesture and medics rush forward, warriors and soldiers alike relaxing.

But Steve’s eyes lock on Rhodes, the tense line of his shoulders. The colonel’s hands hover at his side as he flicks his gaze onto the cavern of the ship, and finally to the young man.

“Tony?” Rhodes says, so soft that it goes almost unheard.

The boy—Peter, Steve remembers from somewhere, a briefing, Natasha's idle gossip maybe—he hesitates, deer-in-headlights, before his expression crumples. Rhodes wavers and Steve sways with him, lightheaded as if he’d taken a blow across his temples. But Rhodes doesn’t fall; instead he catches Peter's shoulders and holds him tight as Peter sobs into his shoulder.

A hand braces his arm and Steve realizes he is tilting, the world wavering in his vision.

“I’m okay,” he tells Natasha, voice distant. She doesn’t let go, and he gently brushes her off. His surroundings have blurred into one soft-focus tragedy; something inside has cracked clean in half and he’s afraid that the sharp edges will slice right through his skin if he doesn’t- if he can just- he can’t-

“Captain,” Strange says, and the man is suddenly far closer than before. He’s being urged into medical transport, but he digs in his heels and waits until Steve is able to gather his attention and focus on him. His eyes are startling blue and terribly kind. “There was no other way.”

 

Steve remembers staring dumbly at Strange, and the silent trip back to the palace. He remembers Natasha walking him to his room and prodding him through getting changed and drinking water and getting into bed.

“No one ever stays,” he observes aloud at one point and Natasha lies down besides him and takes his hand and tells him to get some rest. But for what purpose?

Sleep comes, but it goes too soon. Steve opens his eyes to the elegant coffered ceiling above the bed and wishes he hadn’t. It’s almost two in the morning; Natasha’s gone, only the slight imprint of her head left on the pillow to indicate she was ever there. No one to distract him while he thinks about Bucky, about Sam, about Wanda and Vision and T’Challa in one awful endless loop.

And Tony, who never called. Will never call.

Steve is angry, anguished. Despair clings to the roof of his mouth, clouds his mind with Bucky dissipating in the wind, and Tony, wild eyed, in Siberia. Steve sinks like a stone, on his back, in his bed. He closes his eyes and wishes for the Arctic ice. He wishes Thanos had killed him too. He wishes he’d never woken up.

 

The phone rings.

 

Steve ignores it.

 

It doesn’t stop. It rings and rings and rings until Steve rolls to his side, a simple action that has somehow become monumentally difficult. The phone is still in his suit’s front pocket.

In fact, he thinks, the cogs in his head painfully grinding out connections, both phones are; Bruce had handed Tony's phone off with a sheepish grimace when they’d come together and right now, Steve has both phones and…

_one of them is ringing._

Steve leaps out of bed, knee catching on the night stand and nearly lofting it into the wall. Staggering, he scrabbles for the suit and yanks at the zipper until two flip phones tumble into his palm. The silent one he drops but the ringing one, vibrating between his fingers, he snaps open and presses to his ear.

“…Hello?” someone whispers. “Who’s there?”

Steve’s mouth is open but he’s unable to speak—the voice on the other end, it has to be a recording, a cruel joke, a wrong number and a damned coincidence, because it sounds exactly like…

“This is Tony Stark,” the voice continues, growing angrier; Steve can hear the scraped hoarseness in his tone. “If- whoever has this phone, I will pay you a million dollars to ship it to me, and tell me how you got it, because I swear to- to the remaining lives on this earth that I will hunt you down, and you will not-”

“Tony,” Steve finally utters, because it’s _him_ and he’s somehow _alive_. “Tony, where are you?”

The voice cuts off abruptly. The silence stretches too long, and then, with trepidation and disbelief, Tony says, “Is this a sick joke?”

“No, no, Tony, it’s Steve. They said you’d died, said they’d lost you on Titan,” Steve says too quickly, words thick on his tongue, cracking in strange places.

“They were wrong; I made it back. I’m on earth, right now. Where are you? Who said I died?” Tony demands, and there is the sound of rapid shuffling and movement, as if Tony is right now stepping into his suit.

“We’re in Wakanda. And Dr. Strange, he said,” Steve swallows, heart beating fast. Tony is alive, he is _alive_. “He said there was no other way.”

There is an odd pause.

“Strange died,” Tony says.

“What? No. He’s in stable condition, in the medical ward. We’re in Wakanda, Tony, where are _you_?”

“Oh, god,” Tony says, softly. “Oh my god. Steve, I’m in Wakanda.”

“What? Where?” Steve demands, wrenching the door of his room open and eyes darting up and down the halls, as if he would find Tony waiting at the end of it.

“Bring out your dead, Cap,” Tony says nonsensically. “Quick, tell me who’s still alive. Look, I’ve got T’Challa, Sam, your favorite murdery one-armed headcase, and my own hot blue terrifying psycho android-”

“Tony, that’s not funny, what are you-” With a snap of his jaw, Steve cuts himself off as it hits him. He closes the door to his room, and walks back to the bed. Sits down harder than he intends. His mouth works silently before he can manage, “How?”

“I don’t know. I- I don’t understand, and frankly I’m so, _so_ mad that your dinosaur piece-of-junk is somehow defying _science_ when its technology ranks on par with two solo cups and yarn and this is why magic-” he stops and stutters urgently. “Peter- Peter is- he’s alive? Right? Please, please-”

“He’s fine,” Steve says wetly. “He misses you like hell.”

“Oh thank God,” Tony says. “Oh, Christ.”

They let the silence set until the horrible niggling fear that this is all a hallucination overwhelms him and Steve says, “Tony?”

And Tony says, “Listen, this is good, this isn’t the end, between us we've got the whole damn world, possibly, probably, can we do a survey? So even though we aren’t exactly best friends right now, we should take advantage of the fact that, well. We can’t exactly kill each other like this can we?”

“ _Tony_ ,” Steve pleads, and it must sound awful because Tony hastily backtracks.

“I only mean- you know- this, this is good, we’re- talking, right? And not- shouting. That’s something.”

Steve breathes in and out. “Okay, Tony.”

“Okay?” Tony echoes.

“I never stopped believing in our friendship,” Steve says.

“Could’ve fooled me,” Tony replies softly, but before Steve can say anything, there's a heavy, broken sigh. “But look where we are, huh? Okay, Cap. Maybe the universe is trying to tell us something.  Open lines of communication, call me maybe, blah blah.”

“I’m sorry,” Steve says. “If this is the last time we get to talk. I just want to tell you—”

“I get it, Cap,” Tony cuts in. “And- and me, too. Sorry. But we can indulge in the mushy stuff later. After we save the world again.”

 “I'll take it,” Steve says firmly. “We can do this. Together.”

“Choosing to phone a friend huh?” Tony snipes, but there is a grin in his words. “Alright. Grab a pen. Or- that sweet tablet prototype I’ve heard rumors about. We've got a universe to humpty-dumpty back together again.”

And Steve feels the hollow roaring of grief subside until it was manageable, with Tony's voice in one ear and the fluttering rise of hope rooting and blooming within his chest.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> If you want to read some disjointed thoughts, commentary is [here](https://chouette.dreamwidth.org/139397.html).  
> I tumbl here [aiyahsimone](https://aiyahsimone.tumblr.com).


End file.
